Stories: Rikku
by Empress-Eerian-Sadow
Summary: the second branch of my Stories series. this one deals with Rikku, her past and how she delt with Yuna's Pilgrimage. the story is very G rated just now, but WILL go up in later chapters. currently on hold


A/N: all right, here is chapter one of Stories: Rikku. I'm not entirely happy with it. i forced out quite a bit of it, and i think it shows. but authors tend to be the worst judges of their own work, so whatever. i think it was so much harder to write because i didn't have this huge past for Rikku built up from the get go, just kind of a vague idea. but, I'm working out the kinks for chapter two now. adding Gippal to the mix (which i wasn't going to do) seems to be helping me have some ideas. ooooo! in fact, i just had a really good one while writing my author's notes! yay! look for chapter two later this week then! I'm off to work on my ff7 story Sunrise Sherbet now!  
  
DISCLAIMER: i still don't own any of the final fantasy franchise except my copies of all the games released in the us and my Auron wall scroll. sniff I'm also not making money off my fanfiction. its just lots of fun to expand on the characters made by squaresoft/sqare-enix!

* * *

Chapter 1  
  
I was four, almost five, when I met my Uncle Braska for the first and only time. We were in the Calm Lands where Pop was doing a favor for Rin, so we were there when my uncle and his Guardians came through. They were there almost as long as Pop, Brother and I, 'cause Sir Jecht was pretty badly hurt. I got to know him pretty well. Uncle Braska, not Sir Jecht.  
  
Brother spent most of their stay being afraid of Sir Auron. Pop spent most of their stay being mad at Uncle Braska for something, or trying to stop him from going to Zanarkand. I didn't understand either of them. Uncle Braska was so nice to me, that if he'd asked me to go with them I would have.  
  
He didn't ignore me like everyone else was doing. He never even thought that I was to young to do anything with him. I got to help him take care of Sir Jecht and run little errands for him. When we left, I told him that I couldn't wait to see him again.  
  
He'd smiled in that funny way of his, and said that he hoped it wouldn't be too soon. Sir Auron and Sir Jecht didn't say anything, but they looked pretty sad. I didn't understand that at all.  
  
I hate that I understand it now.

* * *

I remember when Pop decided that we were going to start building a new Home. I was about six. Uncle Braska had died to bring us all a new Calm, and no one knew what had happened to his Guardians. Pop had searched for my cousin Yuna for a few months, but we never found her. I think he needed something else to do.  
  
So, Pop called together all the Al-Bhed he could find, and we all shipped out for Bikanel Island. It was three years before we got the place finished enough that we could move out of the tents, but it was worth it. The Al-Bhed had a place that they could call theirs again, in a place big enough that Sin couldn't destroy it all again.  
  
I wished that Mom could have seen it. And Uncle Braska and Aunt Sera and Yuna. But wishing didn't make it so, I'd learned. Even at the ripe age of nine, I was getting to be a jaded cynic.

* * *

I was eleven and Brother was twelve when Pop sent us out on our first real salvage expedition. There were these ruins just off the coast of the Mi'ihen Highroad, and Pop and some of the other grown-ups thought that there might be something that we could use or study hidden under the water there.  
  
Everyone in the salvage crew was a volunteer. Except Brother and me. We got volunteered by Pop. He wanted us to learn how to make ourselves useful to the rest of our people. Like Brother could ever manage to do that!  
  
When our ship left the docks that we'd built near Home, I remember thinking that none of us were going to come home. This was going to be the trip that saw the end of Uncle Braska's Calm, and we were all going to die.  
  
And then this friend of Brother's named Gippal tossed me over the side of the ship. 


End file.
